Holiday Travel in Disarray as Huge Blizzard Hits East Coast

At Kennedy and the other two major airports in the New York area, more than 1,400 flights were canceled on Sunday. Amtrak canceled trains between New York and Boston.Credit
Andrew Burton for The New York Times

A rare December blizzard unleashed its fury on the East Coast on Sunday, disrupting holiday travel by air, rail and road in the region and centering its force on the New York metropolitan area by early evening.

By the time the snow is expected to diminish on Monday morning, the totals in some New York areas could pile as high as 20 inches, forecasters said, while the gale-force winds whipping in excess of 50 miles per hour could stir up treacherous whiteout conditions.

Kennedy International Airport in New York and Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey suspended all flights Sunday evening, according to Sara Beth Joren, a spokeswoman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Few flights were operating out of La Guardia Airport in New York.

New Jersey declared a state of emergency, allowing the authorities to close roads and make evacuations as necessary, The Associated Press reported. New Jersey Transit suspended all buses Sunday night.

Officials in New York City had been preparing for the snow emergency for days, lining up snowplows and salt spreaders, placing more subway cars in tunnels and calling in Sanitation Department workers on their day off.

“It’s arrived,” Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said at an afternoon news conference, cautioning New Yorkers to stay off the roads, take mass transit and be careful while walking on the streets as the storm intensified.

“The meteorologists at the National Weather Service are telling us that we may see up to 16 inches of snow, as well as gale-force winds that could reach up to 55 miles per hour,” Mr. Bloomberg said. “It’s hard to stand up in a 55-mile-an-hour wind, and particularly when the ground under your feet is slippery, so this really is dangerous.”

The enormous storm, which originated in the Gulf of Mexico, moved across Florida and picked up speed in the Carolinas on Saturday, wasted little time in affecting the Northeast on Sunday morning.

“It did start a little earlier than planned,” said Lauren Nash, a meteorologist on duty at the National Weather Service’s New York office in Upton, N.Y.

By 6 p.m., 1,444 flights had been canceled at the three major New York airports, according to Steve Coleman, a spokesman for the port authority. American Airlines said it had canceled most flights out of the three New York airports after 3 p.m. US Airways said it had canceled 567 flights Sunday, the majority in the Northeast. Throughout the day on Sunday, Delta canceled 850 flights from the Carolinas to Boston.

Even before bearing down on the coast’s most densely populated areas, the storm had led to states of emergency in North Carolina, Virginia and Maryland on Sunday, although the mid-Atlantic did not get hit as hard as anticipated. The brunt of the storm was expected to buffet the Philadelphia, New Jersey and New York areas, forecasters said.

Blizzard warnings were posted through Monday evening in many areas along the East Coast.

Officials were already preparing for a difficult morning commute. The Long Island Railroad was expecting to operate on a holiday schedule on Monday, officials said. L.I.R.R. suspended service on its Oyster Bay branch, and other trains were encountering delays of up to 20 minutes Sunday evening.

Parts of the New York metropolitan area should expect 15 to 20 inches by the time the snowfall ends Monday, Ms. Nash, of the weather service, said.

By 7 p.m. on Sunday, more than 2,400 Sanitation Department workers were scheduled to relieve their colleagues to work throughout the night, their crews focusing on highways and bus routes and all 6,000 miles of city streets. The department, Mr. Bloomberg said, had 365 salt spreaders, 180,000 tons of salt and 1,700 snowplows “ready to fight the storm.”

Judging by the conditions in Central Park by early Sunday evening, the storm will be a fierce opponent.

The average snowfall in Central Park for the month of December is 3.3 inches, and that amount was recorded by 5 p.m. on Sunday alone, just as the heaviest bands of snow began arriving.

In order for a snowstorm to be considered an official blizzard, accumulation is not the deciding factor, said David Stark, another meteorologist in the Upton office of the weather service. Winds must be 35 m.p.h. for three consecutive hours, he said, and visibility must be less than a quarter of a mile. If those conditions occur as expected overnight in Central Park, Mr. Stark said, this would be the city’s first blizzard since Feb. 12, 2006, when a storm dumped 26.9 inches of snow on Central Park.

If a blizzard in December is an unusual sight for New York City, even more rare was how the storm affected major sporting events. After Mayor Michael A. Nutter of Philadelphia declared a snow emergency, the National Football League postponed the Eagles-Vikings game at Lincoln Financial Field, scheduled for 8:20 p.m. Sunday, until Tuesday night. The N.F.L. cited public safety and uncertainty about the extent of the storm as reasons for pushing the game back to Tuesday.

An error has occurred. Please try again later.

You are already subscribed to this email.

Moving an outdoor football game because of snow is exceedingly rare: on Sunday, the N.F.L. said the last time it had happened was in 1932, when the 1932 league championship game between the Chicago Bears and the Portsmouth Spartans was moved indoors to Chicago Stadium because of bitter cold and heavy snow. (Two weekends ago, the Giants-Vikings game, scheduled to be played at the Metrodome in Minneapolis, had to be moved to a different stadium when snow caused the Metrodome’s roof to collapse.)

This weekend’s storm affected more than just the Eagles and Vikings. On Sunday, the New England Patriots were forced to spend the night in Buffalo after their game, and the Giants stayed in Green Bay.

Those attempting to escape the airports and travel by train fared no better in the Northeast.

“We can probably send out those trains but without the assurance they’d actually be able to make it there and get it back,” said Cliff Cole, an Amtrak spokesman. “Better to have people stay safe where they are, despite the inconvenience.”

The problem was not snow, said Mr. Cole. “We can run our trains in large amounts of snow,” he said. “When we hear winds, they can affect the signals, switches and overhead wires. That’s when we start to take extra precautions.”

Many bus carriers canceled their routes between Washington and Boston. Megabus canceled its Sunday service in New York, Philadelphia and Washington. BoltBus canceled service on all routes after 4:30 p.m. on Sunday, and on all routes Monday. DC2NY canceled its Sunday evening schedules. David Wang, the owner of Eastern Travel, said all buses departing from New York and Washington were also canceled Sunday and travelers could face more delays on Monday.

Already by Sunday afternoon, about 400 flights had been canceled at Philadelphia International Airport, with more expected, said Victoria Lupica, a spokeswoman for the airport.

At Kennedy International Airport, the flight boards inside Terminal 8 displayed a stream of yellow cancellation notices by about 1:45 p.m. Of 60 flights listed at one point, only six claimed to be “on time.”

On the AirTrain from Jamaica station to Kennedy, traveler after traveler told stories of flight cancellations and extensive delays. Luciana Dossa and her husband, Marcelo, were on their way back to Austin after a week in New York. They found out Sunday morning that their American Airlines flight had been canceled after they checked online. But they could not get through to the airline on the phone, so they decided to come to the airport anyway “because we need to find a way to get home,” Ms. Dossa said.

“American Airlines can put us on another flight, that’s what we’re hoping for,” she said.

Asked if she was optimistic, Ms. Dossa laughed. “This is the first time that this has happened to us,” she said, “and we didn’t realize that it was so bad, since it only started this morning.” She said the flight problems did put a bit of a damper on their Christmas vacation, but added that she did not have to work again until Tuesday. “But the idea for this extra day was not to spend it at the airport,” Ms. Dossa lamented. “We will decide if we are going to stay at the airport or spend the hours somewhere else,” she said. “Or enjoy the snow,” her husband added with a smile.

Back in New York City, residents anxiously prepared for their first big storm of the winter. Go Greene Hardware on Fulton Street in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, bustled Sunday morning with customers purchasing snow blowers, shovels and salt. “You never know, just trying to get ready,” said Daniel Torres, 40, a maintenance worker at a neighborhood nursing home, after he purchased a small electric snow blower and salt. “Just trying to get everything together.”

Ursula Hegewisch, who lives in the neighborhood and owns a local restaurant, Berlin, left the hardware store — after wishing a fellow customer “good luck” — with $80 worth of storm aids, including two shovels, a large bag of salt pellets and a windshield scraper. She was still debating whether to open her restaurant for dinner, which would be in the peak of the blizzard.

At the nearby Atlantic Terminal shopping center, there was a sprinkling of shoppers but not the usual post-Christmas frenzy. Shoppers and store managers alike attributed the lull to the storm forecasts.

Rebecca Godfrey, 28, who manages the Dead Sea Spa skincare kiosk there, said she had had only three customers in 40 minutes, and just one made a purchase. On the day after Christmas last year, she had already seen 40 or 50 customers by noon, with half making purchases. Ms. Godfrey said she thought the snow was keeping customers away, and she admitted it almost had the same impact on her.

“When I got out of the house I was like, ‘I wish I don’t need to work,’ “ she said. “Usually, the day after Christmas is like my favorite day to work, but today I just felt like being at home.”

Scott Robson, 31, of Fort Greene, was preparing to do exactly that when the storm intensified later Sunday. He joined throngs of customers in the Game Stop on Atlantic Terminal, easily the busiest store at the mall.

“I was hoping there wouldn’t be as many people out because of the snow, but I guess not,” Mr. Robson said with a laugh. “I’m sort of trying to stock up, to get some games to help out with the boredom when I’m stuck inside.”